I haven’t been through a breakup, I’m not going through a midlife crisis and I don’t have a new job, so why, after more than 30 years of being blonde, have I decided to go brunette?
You might be surprised to know that it was because my trusted French hairdresser retired. It took me years to find her after numerous traumatic visits to various French salons, with disastrous results.
So when she sat me down to give me the news, I burst into tears. I quickly made an appointment up until her last day of work. Since then, I’ve channeled my inner French girl and gotten a low-maintenance haircut (I do it myself) and dyed my hair. I now use a light brown dye, as close to my original color as possible, which I buy in Spain every few months for the princely sum of €2.99.
Samantha Brick’s wedding in 2008. Instead of the sleek champagne-blonde bun we’d talked about, she had a straggly lock of brown hair plastered to the top of her head, she writes.
Samantha loves France, but says there is nothing wonderful about the country’s hairdressers.
Samantha (right) with an 80s-style spiral perm, although in this case it may not be the fault of a French hairdresser
While there are many wonderful things about life in France (and I feel a little guilty saying this, as this country has been my home for 16 years and I am now a French citizen), I am afraid that, to be honest, there is nothing wonderful about the country’s hair salons. If you are going to spend your holidays in France this summer, my advice is to enjoy the “pain” and the “vin” but please, whatever you do, do not cross the threshold of a hair salon.
For starters, most beauty salons operate on a chaotic appointment system, you will never sit in the chair at the appointed time. Let me share some examples of my hair horrors…
During my time in France, I have visited dozens of beauty salons and have emerged from them in various deplorable states. I have emerged with faint silver threads in my hair, an orange tint, and once (after paying €100), I walked away with the same root hair I had entered with.
The day before my wedding in France in 2008 should have been a stress-free day. Instead, I was sitting in the hairdresser’s chair staring in absolute horror at the result of my bridal hair rehearsal. Instead of the sleek champagne blonde bun we’d discussed, I had a straggly lock of brown hair stuck to the top of my head. The blonde highlights I’d asked for were orange. Worst of all, there were uneven patches of colour in my parting, left by the blonde peroxide my stylist had enthusiastically applied while also talking to her friend on the phone.
I wanted to cry, but instead I gulped down the glass of champagne my sisters had been kind enough to prepare for me and then told them to cancel their bridesmaid appointments to avoid any more tears.
For the big day, I was too cowardly to tell my stylist exactly what was wrong with her efforts (plus, I was still learning the language) and moved on.
You’d think the country that invented Brigitte Bardot would know how to do highlights properly. Still, I was initially travelling to the UK to get them done every eight weeks. Six times a year doesn’t sound so bad, does it? I had a fantastic stylist in Solihull, who I didn’t have to discuss colour or cut with – he knew better and I trusted him.
A fabulously chic friend (also blonde) has been a regular at her Knightsbridge salon. She, like me, has been lucky enough to live in rural France. We are both alpha women who (now) speak fluent French and yet somehow emerge from every salon looking like someone has put a comedy wig on our heads.
Despite the cost of living crisis, another friend has refused to give up appointments at her Essex beauty salon, using air miles to get there. Other friends are bulk-booking their Ryanair seats as soon as they go on sale.
I only stopped returning to Solihull because of the lack of low-cost flights outside of summer.
Many of my visits to French beauty salons have been the result of word-of-mouth recommendations. Every time I went, I had to drive two hours, as there is nothing local in rural France.
One “blonde specialist” ran her salon from home, which meant that after she cleared the Lego off the kitchen table, I stood nearby with the child’s spaghetti tea in the sink drainer while the dye was washed out of my hair. Beauty salons run by a home-based person are also surprisingly expensive places. I paid €150 (and a tip) for highlights that left me looking like a Liverpool FC footballer from the Spice Boys era.
Samantha used to fly back to the UK to visit her salon in Solihull rather than risk visiting a French hairdresser.
You’d think the country that invented Brigitte Bardot would know how to do good highlights, writes Samantha Brick
At another beauty salon in a nearby town, a blonde woman put me at ease. I gasped when I saw her and booked an appointment on the spot. But while her thick hair looked fabulous, mine did not. The ends began to break due to the amount of bleach she used. This, combined with the hours of waiting for my 10am appointment, meant that I stopped seeing her due to the stress involved.
After five years of living in France, I would stop blondes in the street and inspect their locks before asking them for their hairdresser’s details, but to no avail. One woman, a lawyer, told me she had travelled to Switzerland to get her hair done, while another woman explained that her sister had done it for her.
I can only speculate, but I suspect these hairdressers are used to dyeing dark, thick French hair blonde, not the finer, often mouse-coloured British hair like mine. Take France’s first lady, Brigitte Macron, and her glorious, full-bodied blonde haircut. Her mane can certainly handle the onerous amounts of bleach applied to it over the years.
There are clearly good reasons why sophisticated French women like actress Marion Cotillard and fashion guru Carine Roitfeld have low-maintenance, shoulder-length brown hair. There’s no need to dye or get a complicated haircut. Because yes, the cuts here are often pitiful, too.
I finally found my pearl of a hairdresser, Nicole, by pure chance in a neighbouring village. But since she stopped bleaching her hair for the retraite, the only time a French hairdresser will touch my hair again will be when I’m about to be buried six feet underground.